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<H1>DropbProx</H1>
<FONT SIZE="4"><I>Paulo Jerônimo (http://paulojeronimo.com)</I></FONT><BR>
<FONT SIZE="4">Last modified on Tue Mar 30 15:50:09 2010</FONT>
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<H1>Summary</H1>

<P>
<B>A GAE proxy to your Dropbox account.</B>
</P>

<H1>Description</H1>

<P>
The DropbProx aims to allow you to use your own domain to get files published in your <A HREF="http://www.dropbox.com">Dropbox</A>. So, after setting up your Dropbox account number at the application and publish it on Google App Engine (GAE), you will access your files in the Dropbox linking them to a more significant domain than that presented by URL <CODE>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/YOURDROPBOXNUMBER</CODE>.
</P>
<P>
This code is a very simple reduction/adaptation of <A HREF="http://code.google.com/p/mirrorrr/">mirrorrr project</A> (by <A HREF="http://www.onebigfluke.com/">Brett Slatkin</A>) held specifically to achieve the goals to build a proxy for public files from a user account in the Dropbox. If you want a full (and FREE) proxy to run on GAE, use the mirrorrr!
</P>

<H1>Motivation</H1>

<P>
I was looking for a FREE alternative to the problem described above. That's because I canceled my account on a virtual private server (VPS), which kept my domains. So, I could not use Apache 2 as <A HREF="http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/F469AE1E-29AB-44EF-8DBE-BF6C57CCDC26/">reverse proxy</A> or his <A HREF="http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2008/11/08/tinyurl-ify-dropbox-public-links-with-htaccess/">mod_rewrite</A> as a solution to this problem. With just a few searches on Google, I found a proxy written in Python (and able to run on GAE). Thus, I adapted his code to suit my needs.
</P>

<H1>Installation</H1>

<UL>
<LI>Create a new project on GAE.
  <UL>
  <LI>For example, I created a project named <CODE>pj74arqs</CODE>. A good tutorial about how to do this (for windows users) is the post "<A HREF="http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-proxy-server/12890/">Setup your own Proxy Server in 5 Minutes for Free</A>"
  </UL>
<LI>Change <CODE>application</CODE> variable at file <CODE>app.yaml</CODE> to the name of your created project on GAE;
<LI>Change <CODE>DROPBOX_NUMBER</CODE> variable at file <CODE>mirror.py</CODE> to your own Dropbox number;
<LI>Publish the application on GAE;
  <UL>
  <LI>Windows users: see <A HREF="http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-proxy-server/12890/">this post</A>;
  </UL>
<LI><I>Optional</I>: Change the domain of the published application.
  <UL>
  <LI>In my case, after publish the application, the domain was <CODE>pj74arqs.appspot.com</CODE>. But, this wasn't good for me yet. So, I changed the URL for that application to my subdomain: <CODE>a.paulojeronimo.com</CODE>. That was much better!
  </UL>
</UL>

<H1>Use</H1>

<UL>
<LI>Instead of access your files using the Dropbox URL (<CODE>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/YOURDROPBOXNUMBER</CODE>) you can now use the GAE application URL.
  <UL>
  <LI>In my case, instead of access files at <CODE>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/345266</CODE>, I can now do that using <CODE>http://a.paulojeronimo.com</CODE>. For example, the files <A HREF="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/345266/curriculo/curriculo-pj.html">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/345266/curriculo/curriculo-pj.html</A> and <A HREF="http://a.paulojeronimo.com/curriculo/curriculo-pj.html">http://a.paulojeronimo.com/curriculo/curriculo-pj.html</A> (my portuguese resume ;-) are the same, but the second is much more expressive, isn't it?
  </UL>
<LI>Update a file in your Dropbox account and refresh your URL. You will see that was updated in your proxy too!
</UL>


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